Typical existing wireless communication antennas capable of providing adaptive beam forming and/or multiple beam switching are relatively expensive. No low cost antenna solution provides multiple beams along with antenna diversity, particularly an antenna that would further provide multiple bands and/or multiple services. Thus, the prior art fails to provide an economical antenna system that has variable beams, reconfigurable for different beam patterns or an economical antenna system that provides communication via multiple bands using multiple services.
Gans et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,610,617, entitled Directive Beam Selectivity for High Speed Wireless Communication Networks, uses butler matrices to form beams for use in wireless communications. The disclosure of Gans is incorporated herein by reference. The antenna of Gans selectively provides a narrow beam in different directions. Thus, using the Gans antenna one may provide a narrow beam to one side or a narrow beam straight ahead. In such existing butler matrices the number of beams are limited by the number of inputs and outputs to the matrix. By way of example, in an existing Butler matrix with four input ports and four output ports, the matrix typically only provides four beams for a user to select from.
Existing, so called, adaptive antenna arrays, use components which render the cost of the system very high. Typically in such adaptive antenna arrays, amplifiers and phase shifter circuits are attached to each antenna element, or at least each column of the array. So by way of example, if an existing adaptive antenna array has 64 elements, it may have 64 sets of phase shifters and/or 64 amplifiers/attenuators, or at least one set of phase shifters and/or one set of amplifiers/attenuators for each column of the array. This dramatically increases the cost and complexity of the entire system. These components typically provide an ability to change the magnitude and the phase at each element. Such adaptive antenna arrays require amplifiers and phase shifters to obtain a desired phase and amplitude progression across the array. As phase shifting also induces signal strength losses, amplifiers are also used in an attempt to recoup these losses as well to increase the adaptability of the system. In antenna systems, noise is an important parameter. By using amplifiers at the antenna the noise performance of the adaptive antenna array is also enhanced to also overcome noise created by the phase shifters. An antenna element known in the art is an electromagnetically coupled patch antenna described by R. Q. Lee et. al. in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and propagation, Vol. 38, No. 8, August 1990, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.